The author of this article, Holland Cotter, discusses how museums sparked his interest when he was living in Boston as a kid. I thought this article was interesting because he talks about how he got interested in museums through Egyptian art that was on display. Instead of seeing the art as the Egyptians meant for it to be seen, as an “irrepressible hunger for life”, he just saw death. This was really interesting to me because it demonstrates that people can interpret art in so many different ways, oftentimes even differently than how the artist meant to portray it. When you place different works of art in a museum people have a chance to compare different artists, eras and styles at one time.
The author explains that he had not been to the museums since a child and when he returned it was great to compare reality to what he remembers of the museum, and was happy that it matched for the most part. I think that this is also another important part of museums: they’re stable and yet fluid. Most of the collections stay the same over time which allows more people to experience the objects, but museums can also acquire new objects and collections to expand what is already there. This gives the museum the unique ability to hold lots of different material, newly collected and old acquisitions, and display them for long periods of time. This means that if I go to either of the two museums that he mentions in the article, Museum of Fine Arts or the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, I can look at the same objects that he describes seeing as a child.
I’m most interested in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum because of the way that it was created and maintained. Instead of displaying artifacts on white walls with a distinct understanding of why they were arranged in a particular way, Gardner filled her home with lots of different art, making it an eclectic mixture of different pieces and allowing you to explore and discover works of art, furniture or statues. What I loved about this way of designing a museum is that you are surrounded by pieces that are part of a decorated, ornate space so you are never without something interesting to look at. From the pictures, it really does give off the feeling of a home because the walls are covered in decorative wallpaper and there is a large courtyard with statues in the center of the building. Gardner made certain that the way she arranged the pieces would not change by stipulating in her will that if a piece is moved from the collection, the entire museum would be put up for auction. While this is not feasible for museums to do now, it’s something that I’ve never heard of before and I thought it was a cool way to leave behind a memory of yourself and what was important to you.
Overall, this article made me think about the way that museums are designed overall, and why they’re important for society. Museums allow you to collect artifacts from around the world and put them on display for people to see throughout the years. This makes art and other objects available over time and helps to spread understanding of culture to many generations. I also realized how many different forms a museum can take: from a house created and filled by one person, to a large art gallery with pieces acquired over a long period of time that is constantly added to.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This seemed like an interesting article. I like your idea of museums to be “stable and yet fluid” and that objects in the museum may stay the same for long periods of time. This gives new visitors relatively the same experience as others. If the museum obtains new objects then frequent visitors will keep attending to see the new objects. This is important for smaller cities with few museums to keep retention high. Museums must satisfy the locals as well as tourists. It is really easy for art museums to change. I’ve personally been to the WSU Art Museum a dozen times but only gone to the Conner Museum twice (not including class visits and time spent for the final project).
ReplyDeleteThe section you wrote about Isabella Stewart Gardner interested me as well. Each of us can think of our home as a museum. What we choose to display for guests, and what we don’t, and what we change the next time the same guest comes to visit. We all want to show object we think to be important, just like museums and how they want to connect with the visitors to tell a story. Our lives are filled with objects to show.